BEACON

Enabling Federated Cloud Networking

NEW WAYS TO FEDERATE CLOUD NETWORKS AND SECURE THEM

BEACON is a Research and Development project, which receives funding from the EU through its Horizon 2020 framework programme.

The main goal of this project is two­-fold: research and develop techniques to federated cloud network resources, and to derive the integrated management cloud layer that enables an efficient and secure deployment of federated cloud applications.

BEACON will deliver an homogeneous virtualisation layer, on top of heterogeneous underlying physical networks, computing and storage infrastructures, providing enablement for automated federation of applications across different clouds and datacenters.

This project will define and implement a federated cloud network framework that enables the provision of federated cloud infrastructures, with special emphasis on intercloud networking and security issues, to support the automated deployment of applications and services across different clouds and datacenters. One of the key points of this project is that it is fully driven by real industry uses cases proposed by different cloud actors, such as cloud providers, cloud technology developers, and cloud-user companies and institutions, that are represented by the different partners of the project consortium.

Horizon 2020 is the biggest EU Research and Innovation programme ever with nearly €80 billion of funding available over 7 years (2014 to 2020) – in addition to the private investment that this money will attract. It promises more breakthroughs, discoveries and world-firsts by taking great ideas from the lab to the market.

Seen as a means to drive economic growth and create jobs, Horizon 2020 has the political backing of Europe’s leaders and the Members of the European Parliament. They agreed that research is an investment in our future and so put it at the heart of the EU’s blueprint for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth and jobs.

The potential and capabilities of modern ICT systems are still growing exponentially fuelled by the progress in electronics, microsystems, networking, the ability to master increasingly complex cyber-physical systems and robots, and progress in data processing and human machine interfaces. These developments provide major opportunities for Europe to develop the next generation of open platforms on top of which a multiplicity of innovative devices, systems and applications can be implemented.

These new solutions will enable a wealth of new business developments in particular for SMEs, and will contribute to boosting competitiveness, creating jobs and supporting growth.

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